The comedy sequel Horrible Bosses 2 and the CG Animated Penguins of Madagascar went in circles with no traction.
The long-awaited awards contending biopic The Imitation Game opened with great numbers.
Pamela McClintock of THR:
Lionsgate's The Hunger-Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 was the easy victor at the otherwise soft Thanksgiving box office, earning $82.7 million to score the third-best gross of all time for the five-day holiday, not accounting for inflation. The penultimate installment in the YA film franchise has now earned $225.7 million in North America and $480 million worldwide.
Domestically, however, it still continues to trail well behind last year's The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which finished Thanksgiving with $296.3 million in North American ticket sales.
New entries Penguins of Madagascar and R-rated comedy Horrible Bosses 2 both did less business than expected after opening Wednesday, helping to explain why overall revenue was down more than 20 percent from last Thanksgiving. Horrible Bosses 2 in particular came in well behind projections, although it sports a relatively modest production budget of $40 million.
From DreamWorks Animation, Penguins took in $36 million for the five days, one of the lowest numbers for an animated film opening over Thanksgiving, not accounting for inflation, although it did best fellow DreamWorks' ill-fated Rise of the Guardians ($32.3 million). The movie's opening isn't good news for Jeffrey Katzenberg's company, and will need strong legs.
The $132 million family film, coming in No. 2 and a spinoff of the popular Madagascar franchise, is directed by Eric Darnell and Simon J. Smith. The voice cast includes John Malkovich, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom McGrath, Christopher Knights, Chris Miller, Conrad Vernon, Peter Stormare, Ken Jeong and Annet Mahendru. Penguins did earn an A- CinemaScore, which could help fuel word of mouth, or at least that's the hope.
Making life undeniably difficult for Penguins was Disney holdover Big Hero 6 , which continued to prosper in its fourth weekend, grossing roughly $26 million for the five days to come in No. 3.
From New Line and Warner Bros., Horrible Bosses 2 grossed $23 million for the five days to come in No. 4. The first Horrible Bosses opened to $28.2 million on its way to earning a stellar $209.6 million worldwide.
Heading into the weekend, tracking suggested Horrible Bosses 2 would gross $35 million or more, while Penguins was expected to take in between $40 million and $45 million.
Directed this time out by Sean Anders, Horrible Bosses 2 re-teams most of the original cast, including Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis, whose characters set out to start their own business, only to be swindled. Jennifer Aniston, Jamie Foxx, Chris Pine, Christoph Waltz and Kevin Spacey also star.
As awards season heats up, there was a slew of offerings for adults at the specialty box office, including director Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game, which The Weinstein Co. debuted Friday in New York and Los Angeles.
The biopic, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, did huge business, earning $482,000 for a location average of $120,500, the second-best showing of the year after The Grand Budapest Hotel ($220,000) and among the fifth best of all time.
Next Up: The horror pic The Pyramid follows a team of U.S. archaeologists that unearths an ancient pyramid buried deep beneath the Egyptian desert. As they search the its depths, they become hopelessly lost in its dark and endless catacombs. Searching for a way out, they become desperate to seek daylight again. Soon they come to realize they aren't just trapped, they are being hunted.
Daniel Meersand and Nick Simon wrote the script from which Grégory Levasseur directed.
The film adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's memoir called Wild begins its limited bow.
The story follows a woman (Reese Witherspoon) who falls into reckless and destructive behavior following her own divorce and the death of her mother. She makes a rash decision - to hike more than 1,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, alone. In the process she reclaims her life.
Based on neuroscientist and author Lisa Genova's debut novel--Still Alice follows Alice Howland (Julianne Moore), a fiercely independent 50-year-old Harvard University psychology professor at the height of her career. She soon begins to notice lapses in her memory and receives a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's Disease She soon must come to terms with it and the ways in which it will change her life.
The comedy Life Partners follows co-dependent friendship between two very different girls — type-A Paige (Gillian Jacobs) and lesbian slacker Sasha (Leighton Meester). Paige has vowed that she won’t get married until Sasha has the same legal right and that works out fine until Paige meets Tim (Adam Brody), a young and charming doctor.
Susanna Fogel co-wrote the script with Joni Lefkowitz from which Fogel directed.
No comments:
Post a Comment